


Five Times Q Shared his Food and One Time Someone Fed Him

by Diminua



Series: Five Times Q... [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:13:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua





	1. Chapter 1

He doesn’t think until he’s already eaten half his ice cream, but of course as soon as Screamer sees it her eyes go big and offended. She’s got his eyes, his mother’s eyes, greenish grey and serious looking, his hair in thick dark waves, heavy and perpetually tangled. They neither of them look anything like their pale and generally absent fathers. Dominant genes, he supposes. 

He snaps off the bottom of the cone before Screamer can say a word, scoops up some of the ice cream – its half melting or it wouldn’t be possible - and holds it out. That mollifies her somewhat, and although she doesn’t remember to say thank you, and he doesn’t remember to insist that she does, they’re quite companionable, sitting on the low wall by the car park, licking the last of the cheap vanilla from their fingers.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Q really talks to Eve she’s threatening a photocopier with physical violence. 

Q himself is always unfailingly polite and careful with machines. Abnormally polite, even after his little sister Felicity giggled at him for absent mindedly _thanking_ a cash point. 

‘You won’t be laughing when the machines take over and you need me to put in a good word for you.’ He’d said, mock serious. 

‘With their positronic brains.’ Felicity had borrowed his copy of _I, Robot_ a few months back. She got different things from it than him though, saw it more in the context of when it was written. Which, presumably, is why she’s doing history, art and language GCSEs rather than science subjects. 

‘With their positronic brains.’ He’d agreed. Which meant not at all, of course, since there isn’t any such thing. 

He no longer thinks of her as Screamer, but she still occasionally refers to him as Puddleglum. Because, she says, he doesn’t get excited about anything. 

He doesn’t get excited now. ‘Be nice to that photocopier.’ He says mildly. ‘It’s the only one that’s working.’ 

‘It’s not bloody working. It’s jammed three times.’ 

‘Here, let me have a look at it.’ 

It’s the paper of course, it normally is the paper with copier jams. People don’t seem to understand that you have to fan it out to separate it. Q does so briskly, as if he were shuffling a deck of cards, taps it twice smartly, with it loosely held to get it into alignment again, and this time the print goes through. 

‘A little below your remit isn’t it?’ Eve asks. 

‘Not really. My remit is to make sure things work.’ 

‘You’re not doing the coffee machine next by any chance?’ 

‘I don’t drink coffee. That makes it rather low on my list of priorities I’m afraid. There’s always instant.’ 

Eve winces. ‘The only thing instant is any good for is dipping biscuits, and I don’t even have any biscuits.’ She falls into step with him back to the main area. ‘I tried ordering them for meetings, but our canteen staff have been diverted to other departments until we have a kitchen.’

‘I’ve got a tin you can have. Unopened Christmas present.’ A Secret Santa, actually, from someone new to the department who’d clearly had no idea what to get him. It has one of those nostalgic fake Victorian pictures on it that he’s sure aren’t even remotely accurate, smiling well fed children and young women in beribboned bonnets skating arm in arm with broad chested men though the sparkling snow. It’s still in date.

‘Thanks.’ Eve cracks the plastic seal to take a few back out, setting them down in a little heap as if she feels swiping the lot would be too much. Q picks one up automatically, chocolate chip, and snaps it between his teeth. ‘You’d be surprised how much difference a few biscuits make to a meeting.’


	3. Chapter 3

‘Are you really afraid of flying?’ Eve asks. She’s leaning herself against Q’s workstation where Tanner was until about an hour ago, and she picks up his abandoned cup to sniff at. Q immediately wonders whether Mallory suspects Tanner has a drink problem, since he saw him with that bottle of beer earlier. 

There’s Chinese too, also courtesy of Tanner, who ate just under half the rice and chow mein before going to bunk down in the health room and leaving the rest for Q. Possibly Tanner suspects Q doesn’t eat. 

He takes a forkful now though, rice thick with soy sauce and slightly sticky from sitting. There’s nothing more he can do for Bond at the moment. They’ve promised M they won’t send anyone else up to Scotland. Still Q can’t quite drag himself away, worried that he might still be needed. Maybe hoping it. 

‘Did you sleep with him?’ He counters, pushing the prawn crackers in Moneypenny’s direction. It seems only reasonable to trade confession for confession. 

Eve doesn’t make Q explain who he means by ‘him’.

‘Strange as it may seem, no.’ Eve’s smile is secretive, fond. ‘He said he wasn’t above taking advantage of me because I felt guilty.’ She’s a polite diner, letting the cracker dissolve on her tongue before she continues. ‘Which I suppose should have been my cue to say I didn’t.’

‘Except you did.’ 

‘Of course I damn well did. I shot the man. I thought I’d killed him.’ 

‘I don’t fly if I can help it.’ Q admits, upholding his side of the bargain. ‘I can manage if I take something to calm me down, but it’s not ideal.’ 

‘Any reason?’ Eve is clearly prepared to be sympathetic. It’s almost a pity there’s nothing to sympathise about. 

‘None.’ Q says briskly. ‘I understand the science, I’m aware there are fewer plane than car crashes, nothing traumatic has ever happened to me involving an aeroplane..’ He swaps the rice for the bag of crackers, realises he doesn’t have a clean fork even as Moneypenny is sliding the unused chopsticks from their paper wrapper. 

‘That must have come in useful in Macau.’ He says. 

‘You can find forks everywhere in Macau. It used to be a Portuguese colony.’ 

Q already knew that. He’s not so hot on History as a subject but he’s good at dates and facts. 

He doesn’t bother pointing it out.


	4. Chapter 4

‘There were ants, ants, wearing frilly pants, in the stores, behind the doors. There were ants, ants..’ 

For such a soft spoken man Tanner’s singing voice has surprising vim and volume. What with that and the echo in the cavernous space they intend to have their new firing range, it’s almost deafening. Q has to poke him twice with the blunt end of a stylus to get his attention and shut him up. 

‘Thank you Bill.’ He says. ‘Point amply illustrated I feel.’ He makes a note on his tablet. _Check budget costing for sound absorbent wall material for new firing range._

‘Have a barley sugar.’ He adds, digging in his pocket to find the packet he bought on impulse at the weekend. ‘Good for the throat.’


	5. Chapter 5

007 seems surprised to find Q holding a bloody big kitchen knife when he answers the door, the sharp gleaming edge of it dulled thinly with blood. 

‘I was making a casserole.’ He says, as if he’s worried Bond will think he was dismembering corpses. ‘It’s not something important is it?’ He adds. 

Bond thinks that’s probably the nicest way Q could find to ask him why the hell he’s here.

‘Just satisfying my curiosity.’ He holds out a bottle of wine with a French label, follows Q in as he takes it and turns his back to set it down on the kitchen counter, starts opening drawers more or less at random, obviously trying to remember where he left the corkscrew. 

‘I normally buy screw tops.’ He explains, cheerfully ignoring the unspoken disapproval. ‘Do you want something to eat, since it’s on?’ 

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘I know.’ 

The corkscrew turns out to be lurking inside the six cup teapot, which makes some measure of sense given that Q barely ever needs to use that either. It’s a sort of repository for random objects, half a pack of fruit pastilles, some small change in Euros, spare front door keys to somewhere he no longer lives, a dead mobile phone battery. 

He gives Bond the corkscrew and bottle to manage while Q goes back to making dumplings, dusting his hands over with flour to stop the dough sticking as he rolls it between his palms, dropping each into the open pot as gently as possible, avoiding splashes. 

Bond wanders further into the flat to uncork the wine, probably curious about the layout of the door-free space. Q had liked it, the odd, maze like quality of the walls that intersect, sit at right angles, or split from floor to ceiling to reveal rooms beyond. He’s heightened the effect by painting it all the same mid blue, having the floor the same dark pine. 

‘Did you build this?’ Bond has found the games cabinet and record player that Q put together out of salvaged parts. 

‘I like to tinker with hardware sometimes.’ 

‘And cabinet making?’ Bond is into his vinyl now, flicking through as if he’s going to learn anything from it. (He isn’t. All Q’s vinyl is what his Dad didn’t take when he moved to Spain. Q’s music is in digital format.) 

‘Sometimes.’


	6. Chapter 6

Something sweet, buttery without richness. Something of which one square is enough. 

‘Not that one then.’ James says quietly, and Q feels the press of the tea cup to his lips, cleanses his palate with a sip of weak black keemun before the cup is taken away again. 

He’d been sitting up cross legged when they began this, fidgety, eyes trying to focus through the blindfold. Now he’s half draped across the pillows Bond had piled up, eyes contentedly closed, one arm curled around Bond’s muscular waist, up along his spine, to stop Q slipping down completely. 

Bond’s body is like a furnace, his voice lowered to a throaty, amused, rumble, his knees nudging at Q’s naked legs as he sprawls, increasingly undisciplined and undisturbed by it. 

‘Ready for the next piece?’ 

This is warm and dark, bitter and sweet. Q holds it in his mouth until it melts, lets out an approving sigh as it slips away.  


Bond lets him have another sip of tea before kissing him, long and slow and suggestive, and Q arches instinctively, presses them closer, pushes against the hand Bond has laid on Q’s thigh to keep him still. 

‘Ssh.’ That throaty murmur again, and then he’s gently but firmly pressing Q’s free hand back to the mattress as well. ‘Trust me. Can you do that?’

There’s something there, in those words, that tone, that Q will want to think over later, but for the moment he’s too content. 

‘Of course I can.’ He says, and waits for the next small piece of sweetness.


End file.
